In today's services and knowledge-based organizations, work processes are complex and dynamic, requiring fast and effective coordination among large numbers of people across teams, departments, geographies, and time-zones. Organizations that can maximize the quantity and quality of coordination, communication, and relationship building will be able to provide higher quality services at lower costs. Various studies have shown that multi-tasking across many people and systems is central to productivity and project success. This is supported by research showing that multi-tasking with information technology significantly increases productivity and revenue in a services delivery company. Over a period of five years, a study of a large “head-hunting” firm found that people who used information technology to increase multi-tasking had shorter project times and greater revenue than people who used less information technology (e.g., preferring to use phone and face-to-face meetings).
Ethnographic studies of large knowledge service companies have shown that IT administrators, for example, attempt to multi-task their communications with many team members including IT architects, other administrators, management, project leads, etc. to quickly configure and deliver complex IT systems. As many as 20 independent conversations may be maintained across multiple communications tools (e.g., phone, IM chat sessions, email, voicemail, system messaging, system monitoring tools, face-to-face, etc.) at one time. This massive coordination is required for IT administrators to design and manage highly complex, fault-tolerant systems.
Unfortunately, all of the current tools that support electronic communications are non-optimal in such a dynamic environment. Specifically, phones, video conferencing, voicemail, instant messaging (IM), and email impose costs in communication including distraction, interruption, communication failures, loss of context, and wasted effort.
Email and IM have been useful in coordinating communications with more people than can be achieved with other communications tools (e.g., phone), because it allows the speed of interaction or communications synchrony to vary widely. The problem with IM, however, is that it requires a great deal of effort to type and compose text messages, does not convey emotional subtext very well, and does not integrate well with voice communications modes (e.g., phone, VOIP). Email also suffers from the requirement of typing and composing text messages and provides less communications synchrony making fast, effective communication difficult.
The following references provide general background in the area of instant communication, but fail to teach or suggest the present invention.
The non-patent literature titled “Simulated Virtual Market Place by Using Voiscape Communication Medium” by Yasusi Kanada teaches a voice communication medium called voiscape that enables natural and seamless bi-directional voice communication by using sound to create a virtual sound room.
The non-patent literature titled “Design and Performance of a Stand-alone Media Server” by Khlifi et al. teaches a media server used in VOIP systems for audio interactions with users, NAT traversal, call monitoring, and media recording.
The non-patent literature titled “Observations on Overlap: Findings and Implications for Automatic Processing of Multi-Party Conversation” by Shriberg et al. teaches distribution of overlapping speech in different corpora of natural multi-party conversations, including two types of meetings and two corpora of telephone conversations.
The patent to Duttweiler et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,818,514) teaches a video conferencing system and method for providing enhanced interactive communication. According to Duttweiler, a delay is inserted into the audio transmission path to provide lip synchronization of the image and speech of the respective users.
The patent to Kettler et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,844,597) teaches a method of transmitting signals between communications in which a central control station is adapted to transmit a picture of virtually real ambience to each connected station.
The pre-grant publication to Michael Rojas (2005/0135333) teaches a system and method for instant VOIP messing.
The pre-grant publication to Tiruthani et al. (2006/0062366) teaches an overlapped voice conversation system and method wherein two or more calls to the same destination are mixed and the mixed audio information includes foreground and background calls. The call in the foreground is mixed with a higher volume level than background calls.
The patent to Carroll et al. (2005/0207542) teaches a system and method for on-demand recording of telephone, computer, or video signals.
Whatever the precise merits, features, and advantages of the above cited references, none of them achieves or fulfills the purposes of the present invention.